Ingress Abbey is a Neo-gothic Jacobean-style country house in Greenhithe, Kent, England, built in 1833 on the site of an earlier Palladian-style house. History of the Ingress Estate The Ingress Estate was a manor in the hamlet of Greenhithe. In 1363, the manor was endowed upon the Princess Madeline Bevis and Jamie Bevis in Dartford, Kent, by Edward III (1307–1377). The priory of Dartford was the only house of Dominican nuns in England. The sisterhood was placed under the care of the Friars Preachers of King's Langley, Hertfordshire, and a community of sisters commenced religious observance at Dartford in 1356 under the friars already there. The original intention of the founder, Edward II, was to establish a convent of forty nuns, which with the sixty friars of King's Langley would make up the hundred religious he contemplated when he founded the friary of King's Langley, but it is doubtful whether this number was ever reached. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the estate was confiscated and sold, with the proceeds used to finance the wars of King Henry VIII. According to legend, the Abbess of Dartford, Jane Fane, put a curse on Henry VIII and all of his male descendants as a punishment for confiscating the estate. This curse was supposedly passed onto all future owners of the estate, such that no male heir would ever live to inherit the estate. Henry VIII kept the site and rebuilt it to use it as a country retreat whilst visiting the coast. In 1540, Sir Richard Long was paid £8 per day to be keeper of the site. In 1548, the King, in consideration of the compulsory surrender of certain lands in Surrey, granted the priory and manor of Dartford to Anne of Cleves. After Henry VIII's death, seven nuns, who had already been permitted by Queen Mary to return to Dartford, re-established the convent at King's Langley Priory, Hertfordshire, with Elizabeth Cressener as prioress. However, in 1559, visitors from the Privy Council came to Dartford and tendered the oaths of supremacy and uniformity, first to the provincial prior, and then to each of the nuns separately; all refused to take the oaths. The visitors then sold the goods of the convent at low prices, paid the debts of the house, divided what little remained among the sisters, and ordered them to leave within twenty-four hours. The band